The Determined Bride.
Jo Beverley.
Belgium, 1745.
"Madam, we must stop!"
Wet wind almost s.n.a.t.c.hed away the shouted words of the clergyman clinging to one side of the rocking, racing cart.
"I won"t give up now!" Kate Dunstable screamed back, though she was clinging just as desperately to the other side of the hay-lined cart, and was equally cold and exhausted.
Somewhere nearby in this bleak, cloud-squashed countryside was the father of her child. Nothing would stop her reaching him and compelling him to marry her properly before the child was born.
Before it was born a b.a.s.t.a.r.d.
She pushed her face closer to the jowly one of her companion. "They said the Buffs were up ahead. We must go on!"
To the soldier driving the cart, she yelled, "Faster! Or we"re likely to be benighted in the open!"
There had been some kind of fighting here today for they"d pa.s.sed a cart loaded with wounded. So the driver eagerly whipped the two horses to greater effort, almost tossing Kate into the parson"s lap. She braced herself, trying to cushion any impact with her legs, praying that her obsession wouldn"t injure the child she so wanted to protect from shame.
The polite world was unkind to b.a.s.t.a.r.ds unless they were the offspring of the n.o.bility or royalty. Lieutenant Dennis Fallowfield-d.a.m.n his black heart-was hardly royalty. He was gentry, though, unless that was just another of his lies. His child deserved a place in that world.
Connections. Perhaps a good school. An honest name. All the things that mattered.
"Madam, it is growing dark," the clergyman protested. "And clearly matters here are in some disorder. We should turn back."
"No, Mr. Rightwell. No, I say!"
Kate turned to look ahead through gathering dark made more impenetrable by the wind and drizzle, desperately seeking the ramshackle farmhouse apparently made temporary billet by Dennis"s company. She shared all the clergyman"s concerns, but her need was urgent.
She was already in labor.
"You are mad, madam," he muttered. "Mad, I say."
Kate suspected he was right, though if she"d known her time would come upon her so soon, she probably wouldn"t have been crazy enough to set out on this wild journey.
The cart lurched violently, and fearing they would overturn, Kate flung herself in the other direction. She landed on top of Mr. Rightwell who whooshed as the breath was knocked out of him, then shoved her away, spluttering.
The middle-aged man had been rather chilly and urbane at the start of this enterprise, even though she"d virtually kidnapped him with her insistent demands that he officiate at her wedding. Now he was red-faced and furious.
"It will do precious little good, woman, to find your prospective bridegroom and expire on the spot from exposure.
I insist we turn back. Now!"
"Some shelter must appear soon." Kate struggled to sound rational or else he would take command and retreat.
Surely they must come up with her quarry soon.
Was that... ?
"Yes! A light. Look. A light! That must be them."
It was only a flicker in the gloom, and too late she realized that it could be anyone, even the enemy French. But it was something and her strength was finally giving out.
They would have to stop here, whether Dennis was here or not.
Captain Charles Tennant was in his shirtsleeves, sitting on a beaten-earth floor staring into a leaping fire. The room had been the kitchen of a st.u.r.dy Flemish farmhouse, but the inhabitants had fired the place rather than leave it for the approaching armies.
Disobliging b.a.s.t.a.r.ds, he thought.
One end had burned pretty well, but this end had largely been spared, meaning that the kitchen was weatherproof now they"d shuttered the windows and patched one hole in the ceiling. Though he"d twenty men crammed into the s.p.a.ce, it was a better situation than many they"d been caught in.
For one thing, the men around him were alive, and their wounds were minor. They"d sent the more seriously wounded back down the line and buried the dead.
His mind sought back over the day"s unexpected and disastrous skirmish. Could he have done something differently...?
He shook his head. He"d learned ten years or more ago that such thinking did no good and sapped a man"s ability to fight, to lead others into the thick of it. He was Charles the Bold, wasn"t he? His company was the best, the bravest.
Those that were left.
d.a.m.n this mismanaged, meaningless campaign that had already cost too many lives and would soon cost more.
Perhaps his own. He didn"t fear death, but he hated graves. He wished he"d lived in ancient times when dead heroes were burned on funeral pyres. Better for the dead and for those left behind.
He shook himself and threw another piece of charred beam on the glowing fire. He loved fire. It was alive, hot, and dangerous-like the best moments in life.
Like the best women.
h.e.l.l, they had fire, fresh water from the well, and a few sc.r.a.ps of bedding to add to their own. This was surely soldier"s heaven- The door crashed open, bringing him to his feet in one bound. His sentry gasped, "Cart coming, Captain!"
"Cart?" Charles hastily dragged on his dirty white waistcoat and muddy, b.l.o.o.d.y, braided red coat. "Shut the d.a.m.n door, Milwood. No point in freezing us all again."
The corporal hastily obeyed, leaning back against it, but then he hurtled forward when the door burst open and a wild creature surged in, swathed in a heavy cloak and blanket. "Is this the Buffs?"
Hands shoved the blanket back, and to his astonishment he saw the unforgettable-if ravaged- beauty of Kate Fallowfield. Tension gripped his gut in a way it hadn"t in the worst of the fighting.
d.a.m.nation.
Deep, dingy shadows pressed under her eyes, made heavier by the dim light from the fire, but those eyes were still the most remarkable he"d ever seen. They were scanning the room, however, and now they fixed on him. "Where is he?"
Charles took refuge in anger. "What the devil are you doing out here? And in this weather. And in your condition.
Are you mad? Shut the d.a.m.ned door, Milwood!"
As the corporal rushed to obey, another person spoke. "Indeed she is mad, Captain."
So at least Kate had not come alone. Then he saw who it was. A clergyman?
"I am not mad," snapped Kate. "Where is he?" She spotted the door leading into the other room- the room that was charred and roofless-and headed for it.
Charles caught her arm to halt her. "He"s not there. Sit, Kate."
Though he made it a command, he was surprised when she obeyed, collapsing on the only seating in the room, a rough wooden bench. Since it was by the fire, he eased off her sodden cloak. It was good army issue and had kept her mostly dry, though hanks of her heavy blonde hair were dark with water.
"We have hot water and a bit of tea. Would you like some?" He signaled to his gaping men that someone get busy and make it.
"Thank you." She seemed a great deal calmer, though her hands were clasped tight together. "It will be very welcome. But I must know where Dennis is."
His men had been sitting like stuffed dummies anyway, but to Charles it felt as if the sudden intensity of silence must be answer enough. She was clearly so weary and focused on her need, however, that she was numb to it.
It was tempting to keep talking about tea and trivialities, but he went down on his haunches before her and took her chilled hands. "He"s dead, Kate. We buried him a few hours ago."
He"d wondered sometimes how deep her feelings ran for Dennis Fallowfield. Now he knew. Her eyes went black with a kind of horror, and she swayed so that he swung up onto the bench to hold her. Then her mouth opened to let loose a banshee wail of loss the likes of which he"d never heard before.
"Kate, Kate, don"t! You"ll make yourself ill. The baby..."
She didn"t even seem to hear him, but fell into a heartbroken weeping he could hardly bear. All he could do was to hold her swollen body tighter and tighter and beg her to stop.
Then, abruptly, she did stop, though her breathing turned strange.
"Kate? Kate!"
Slumped against him, she turned her ravaged face up to his. "I"m afraid I"m having the baby, Captain Tennant."
Charles found he was staring down at the immense bulge of her abdomen beneath a heavy brown wool gown as if it were a barrel of gunpowder licked by flames. "Good G.o.d."
"Having the baby?" cried the clergyman, straightening from where he had hunched over the fire. "You can"t possibly ..."
Kate didn"t seem to hear the protests. She just stared up at Charles with the kind of hopelessness he"d seen sometimes in a dying man. "I did so want it not to be born a b.a.s.t.a.r.d."
She melted then into a weary weeping perhaps more heartbreaking than her previous agony.
Charles, however, was hard pressed not to point out that she could have thought of the problem a little sooner.
He gestured to Private Peabody to bring over the mug of tea, praying for anything to help handle this. But even as he took the mug in his hand, Kate stopped crying and sat up, hands to abdomen, a frightened look on her face.
Charles ran a number of violently obscene comments through his mind. He was stuck in a storm in the middle of a running battle, with a birthing woman and no midwife closer than the baggage carts.
"Kate, you can"t have the baby here."
Her face relaxed, and she was transformed by her smile-the quirky smile that crinkled her eyes and turned up the right side of her generous mouth. "And what, pray, do you suggest I do to prevent it?"
Charles looked around the crowded room as if one of his men might have an answer, and then started when she touched his hand, making him spill some of the tea.
"If that"s for me, may I have it?"
He gave it to her. "How did you get here?"
"In a cart. It was going up ahead to collect more wounded."
So there was no immediate way of sending her back.
He realized Milwood was still in the room, gawking like the rest. "Get back on sentry duty!" he snapped. "And if that cart comes back, stop it."
"Yes, sir!" The corporal dashed out into the cold, wet night.
"You"re a d.a.m.n crazy woman," Charles told her, but he couldn"t snarl when she was smiling so ruefully at him.
"I thought you"d decided to go back to England."
Her smile faded. "I changed my mind."
"Dennis sent you away, didn"t he?"
She didn"t answer, but just stared into the fire.
"He wouldn"t have changed his mind, Kate."
She looked at him then, and he"d never have thought that laughing, singing, sensible Kate could ever look so hard.
"Oh yes he would."
He was about to vent all his feelings on her, when she caught her breath and he knew she was having another pain.
She wasn"t silent this time, though. "It"s distracting," she gasped, "to have one"s body take over ... like this." Then she relaxed again.
"How much does it hurt?"
"Not much. Just a sort of pulling. It"s more of a shock." She drained the tea and gave him back the mug.
"How long is it likely to be?" Perhaps they could carry her to a safer place, somewhere with women. But it was full dark by now and he couldn"t know about enemy movements. Truth was she was safer here in shelter and guarded by a resolute bunch of redcoats.
"I have no idea," she replied with that wry smile. "I"ve never done this before."
"Come on, Kate. Women know these things. How long?"
"A day, perhaps, though it can go longer, or be very fast. But I don"t know when it started, you see. It was only a little while ago that I was sure."
Charles had never felt so helpless in his life. He glared around at his men. "Can anyone think of a way to get a woman here to help?"
It was a d.a.m.n stupid question and got the silence it deserved.